


five times hotter than the sun

by blacksatinpointeshoes



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, LIKE I SAID. ITLL BE FINE, Lightning - Freeform, Medical Inaccuracies, Near Death Experiences, Panic Attacks, Spoilers for 137, but also medical research WAS done, cardiac arrest - Freeform, hes fine dont worry, naps, oh also oops uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21159191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksatinpointeshoes/pseuds/blacksatinpointeshoes
Summary: No, Zolf, youcan’twalk off a lightning strike.





	five times hotter than the sun

**Author's Note:**

> I understand that Zolf isn’t taking any mechanical fatigue penalties but consider: no
> 
> enjoy :)

“Do you need healing?” Azu asks, rushing forward to meet him as Zolf staggers in, his hair on end, his clothes tattered and covered in soot. 

Zolf chokes on a,  _ “Yes,  _ please,” and instantly collapses into her arms. 

Admittedly, Azu was expecting something like this to happen, but she didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly. Which means that instead of being prepared, Azu is holding an armful of still slightly electric dwarf and looking around the room for any available surface on which to lie him down. There  _ isn’t  _ one, so Azu sets him on the floor and calls for Aphrodite. 

“What’s going on?” Cel exclaims it more than asks the question as they rush over, their hands already inside the pockets of their jacket and rifling through the coat’s extensive library of potions. “Is he okay? Well, obviously he’s not okay, he’s sort of— you know— unconscious— but I’m wondering more  _ why  _ is he not okay and also what I can do to fix that?” 

Azu looks up in that solemn way of hers and sighs. “I think he tried to eat the storm.”

Tilting their head to the left— then to the right, to make sure their ear is working properly — Cel shrugs. “I think he mighta actually done it!” 

“Cel—” Azu begins, then is abruptly cut off as a cold fear jackknifes through her side. “Cel, come down here, please.”

Cel squats back on their haunches and looks Azu in the eye. “Sure thing.”

“Cel, please tell me he’s not—” Azu swallows hard, casts her mind to her god again, because she  _ used  _ Lay On Hands, that should’ve worked at least partially, should’ve healed him.  _ “Please  _ tell me he’s not dead.”

Already frowning over Zolf’s body, Cel wrinkles their nose and squints up at Azu. “Alright, then, that depends: do dwarves need pulses?”

Azu nearly screams. “Gods,  _ yes!”  _ she shrieks, burying her face in her hands. “Yes, I— oh, gods—”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Cel takes something out of their pocket, shakes it up, and Azu hears a metallic ball zing back and forth inside. They put a reassuring hand on Azu’s forearm, slide her palms off her cheeks, and hold up the bottle. “He’ll be  _ fine.  _ Y’know, I was just checking, ‘cause sometimes people  _ don’t  _ need pulses and then you try to give ‘em back and it’s a real disaster— having a pulse you don’t want—  _ anyway,  _ I’m just going to give him a quick shock and he’ll be right as rain!” Cel glances outside, then winces. “Maybe the wrong expression to use!” 

“But he got struck by—”  _ Lightning,  _ Azu wants to finish, but Cel has already taken the metal ball out of its container, rolled it between their hands, and pressed it to Zolf’s chest. 

When electricity arcs out of the marble and surrounds Zolf’s torso in a moment of taut, fleeting agony, lighting him up once again with fire and force, Azu actually  _ does  _ scream. 

So does Zolf, but for different reasons. 

He jolts upright, chest heaving with a breath that’s too shallow for his too fast heartbeat and his too quiet world, because after Zolf realised he couldn’t hear the storm anymore he realised he couldn’t hear  _ anything,  _ and he can’t— breathe he can’t— see— correctly— everything feels like it’s been shifted to the right, like he’s underwater, like he’s suffocating— like he’s  _ suffocating—  _ gods, he can’t take another drowning, he needs air like a lonely man needs love, he needs— he needs— he needs to help his friends, to find—  _ someone,  _ to find— to help? — to —

It’s dark. It’s dark, and Zolf can’t feel his good leg from the knee down. That’s not right. 

Wait.

No, it’s light, his eyes are just shifting, changing, flickering, he’s just— 

He needs to help someone, there’s  _ someone— _

Zolf was in a high place. And then he was falling. And there was a rope— was there a rope? He’s suffocating now— someone else is at the bottom. Are they helping him or are they lying broken at the bottom of a ravine? Or is the pressure in his chest just panic? Zolf can feel the rocks— he has to help someone, there’s  _ someone,  _ there’s always someone—

No—

Not all suffocatings are the same. Feryn was a long time ago.

Zolf screams,  _ “Sasha?”  _ and Azu jerks back so violently she could’ve been the one struck by lightning. 

“No, buddy,” Cel says soothingly, casting a worried look to Azu as she claps her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. “No, it’s not Sasha, it’s just me, okay? It’s just Cel. Your new friend! It’s okay, buddy, I’ve gotcha, you’re safe. Okay? You’re safe.”

Zolf struggles to his feet, stretching out a hand until it reaches some solid part of the dim figure ahead of him, staggering forwards and squinting into the realm of the lighthouse ahead, something too blurry to navigate and spinning much too fast to enter, but he’ll be  _ damned  _ if he won’t do it anyway— come on, now, one foot in front of the other, it’s easy, he knows how to do this, one foot here, then the next, it’s just a fucking  _ straight line—  _ “No,” he says, because he just put Sasha back together; it was the hardest thing he’d ever done before this, “she’s got to be around here somewhere.”

Nearby, Azu has closed her eyes, her hands at her sides, and she  _ is not shaking,  _ dear Aphrodite, she is sturdy and strong and solid as a sycamore with strangler vines. She will not bend or break or fall, just extend a bough to the needy and bleed for the unknowing; she will not bend or break or fall, only forge forwards and find friendships, and if she cannot find them she will scour the stars themselves for the ties that bind. 

“Hey, bud.” Cel stops Zolf in his unsteady tracks, puts a hand on his shoulder. “You gotta look at me, alright?”

Zolf faces them shakily, his eyes gliding over their face before Cel centers him. “Look,” they say, once, twice, then louder: “Sasha’s not here. I’m sorry.”

“Where is she?” Zolf is almost shouting but the world still sounds muffled, and stuffy. 

“She’s—” Cel glances back to Azu, then decides against asking. “I don’t know, but—”

“No one  _ ever  _ knows where Sasha is, Cel,” Zolf insists, his words slurring and stumbling, but he’s not coordinated enough to break their grasp. “Nobody, she’s—” The words falter for a moment and his brow furrows with frustration. “She’s  _ hiding.  _ She— she does that.” 

“She’s not here,” Cel says again. “Not hiding. Not with us. Not part of the team. I’m sorry, bud, but there’s nothing you can do now.”

Azu takes three firm steps towards Cel and stands at their shoulder, a wall of faith and hope and optimism as she  _ promised  _ and as she  _ swore.  _ Azu looks Zolf in the eyes and without wavering, says, “Sasha’s dead, Zolf.”

And the look on his face.

Gods above, the look on his face. It’s part openmouthed grief and part awful, seeping memory— not all of it, though. There are no facts, or dates, or reckonings, just the sweeping feeling that Sasha Racket is dead, and she isn’t coming back.

Azu takes a deep breath. “You need to be healed,” she says softly, and Zolf doesn’t protest. 

“I—” He clears his throat, presses the heel of his hand to his forehead, and when he speaks, his words are just as loud and stilted as before. “I can’t— I can’t breathe right, Azu? I can’t— I can’t— see you— not really, it’s just colours— or— or hear, I’m— can you—”

“Here,” Azu says, and Aphrodite save her, she uses another Lay On Hands. “And— Zolf, I’m sorry.”

Zolf pinches his temples, his shoulders slumping. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, and the magic is bringing back his vision, knitting together burst eardrum and burnt skin, he’s just tired, worn, beat. “‘S fine. I shouldn’t’ve— I just—”

It’d felt so real. It still feels more raw than before, like his memory had brought Sasha to life again for just one fleeting, gaping moment. The words he wants to say are trapped in a cloud of fog that magic healing can’t quite dispel, and Zolf know that the distinct feeling of a puncture isn’t from the lightning. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he says, and Azu gives him a tight, pained smile. 

“I know.” 

Zolf takes one step back and stumbles, and if it wasn’t for Azu’s reflexes, he would’ve hit the ground again in an instant. “S’rry!” he slurs, grabbing her forearm for support. “Still a bit— uh— ”

He looks like a  _ mess.  _ A complete, utter, total  _ mess.  _ His hair is standing on edge; his arms are covered in soot and burns and bruised Lichtenberg figures, and his armour is blackened with ash. There is a flowering, already scarred-over burn that runs from his shoulder, now exposed by the burnt-away cloth, to his palm, jetting through the ink on his bicep and swallowing his wrist. Zolf looks exhausted and weary and determined, and Azu knows that if she asked, he would keep fighting.

“Do you want me to carry you?” she asks instead, as Zolf tries to regain his balance. He blinks up at her. “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

Zolf’s knees buckle before he can answer and Azu scoops him up, his head lolling gently against her bicep as he mumbles, “S’rry, I— y’know, er— th’ ground’s not s’posed to be spinn’n like that, yeah?” 

Azu shifts him in her arms, sighing. “No, it’s not.” 

“Hmmmmm.” Almost drunkenly, Zolf squints around the room, then squeezes his eyes shut. “N’pe, tha’s bad.” 

“Zolf,” Azu scolds, and he frowns up at her chin from where she’s got him held fast. 

“What!”

“You’ve just been struck by  _ lightning,”  _ Azu says firmly.  _ “Twice.  _ You’ve almost  _ died,  _ Zolf. Slow down. We’re never going to take down Shoin if you don’t take the time to recover.” 

The armoured tank in Azu’s arms grumbles slightly. “Don’t th’nk you’re gettin’ out ‘f this ‘ne, then,” he says, and Azu starts. 

“What?”

Zolf takes a moment to find the words that keep escaping him. Then—  _ “Slow. Down,”  _ he repeats, with fervour. “Take your own advice, ‘zu.” 

“Zolf,” Azu says, because she doesn’t know what else to say, but there’s no response. She waits a few moments, frowning as she walks to Cel, who’s fiddling with a small puzzle. “Zolf?”

“Shhhhhh,” says Cel, peering down at him like he’s a dangerous, soot covered baby. “He’s sleeping.” 

“Oh.” 

_ Oh. _

“Where’s Hamid?” 

Cel shrugs. “Right over there.” They point. “I guess we do need to grab him if it’s gonna be naptime, right?” 

“Um,” Azu says, about to tell them that naptime really isn’t what she had in mind, that they need to get going, that they need to complete their mission— but she’s  _ exhausted. _ They all are. “Yes, I suppose we do.” 

Cel holds up a hand for a high five, remembers Azu is holding a whole person, puts it down. “Naptime!” they say, grinning, and Azu sighs fondly. 

“Naptime,” she agrees. “Come on.” 

**Author's Note:**

> aaaas always I can be found on tumblr at thoughtsbubble, on twitter at ucbamba, aaand out in the world, but you don’t get to know where. HMU if you’d like to talk rusty quill! kudos and comments are, of course, so deeply appreciated. thank you for reading.


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